


A Million Years

by SpraceJunkie



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: I sort of vagued the other boys I guess, and that post about the kid who was six but alive for like thirty years, but it's really about Jack, million years ago by Adele, sort of inspired by two things:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpraceJunkie/pseuds/SpraceJunkie
Summary: Jack Kelly had been alive for a million years. Not in time passing, but in life lived.





	A Million Years

A million years.  
Jack Kelly had been alive for a million years.  
Not in sunsets, in months, in days and weeks. Not a million years in time passing by.  
But Jack Kelly had been alive for a million years.  
A million years worth of pain, of hurt, of bruises and cuts, of blood and brokenness. He'd felt fists connect with his body, fists and stones and sticks and metal, time and time again, so that he'd felt a million years worth of hits.  
A million years worth of tears, of sickness, helplessness, of watching the people he cared about die or get lost or simply fade away, killed by life and by living.  
Jack Kelly had been alive for a million years of hurt, a million years of wishes, a million years of wanting, a million years of fruitless plans that led to nowhere, a million years of promises he knew he couldn't keep.  
Promises of health and safety.  
Promises of wealth.  
Promises of dreams come true and love winning out in the end and promises of being more than he was, than they were.  
Jack Kelly had been on the earth for seventeen years of sunsets and sunrises, seventeen years of trying to capture the true beauty he saw in them.  
Seventeen years of drawing and painting, capturing what he saw so he could save it not have it slip away like so many other things.  
Drawing the faces of boys as they were before the beating that changed them for good, before the broken nose and broken jaw and missing teeth, before their hearts and minds hardened and they weren't boys any more.  
Drawing the sunsets, the sunrises, trying to catch their fleeting colors and textures, the world before it woke up, the one thing that everyone, rich or poor, saw and enjoyed the same way.  
Seventeen years of running and trying to escape the inescapable, of lying and fighting and doing his best to move on from the nightmares that controlled him.  
Seventeen years of time, but a million years of life, of seeing things that nobody should have to see, over and over and over and over and over again.  
Jack Kelly had been alive a million years and he regretted all but seventeen, the seventeen true years made up of the soft moments in dusk and dawn, of laughter and teasing and messing around, of being the kid he should have been able to be. He regretted all but the seventeen years of stolen moments, of victory and quiet rest, of nights without nightmares and days without fights.  
Jack Kelly had been alive for a million years.  
Not of time passing, but of life that nobody deserved.  
And he was surrounded by boys who'd lived even longer, who's eyes showed pain that a kid shouldn't feel, who smiled through it all because if they didn't it hurt too much, Jack Kelly had lived a million years and he still didn't know how to survive it.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr, @gay-newsboys for more Newsies content! Including, but not limited to, shitposts, headcanons, bad drawings, and the ongoing war to let Crutchie say fuck!
> 
> Kudos make my day, comments keep me writing! Please leave both!
> 
> Also if you didn't the first time go back and read this not in an informercial voice that's how I wrote it.


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